Fun With A FOUR MASTER

A celebration for Accutek, Winchester

Fun With A FOUR MASTER

A FOUR MASTER is not simply a shop! As a customer, you can expect to become part of a community bound together by a passion for great sound and music in your car.

We were recently invited to attend a very special event at FOUR MASTER Accutek near Winchester. The occasion was a celebration of 20 years since the company began trading and of course the day would not be complete without a number of lovingly upgraded cars for attendees to experience.

Significant suppliers who have helped Accutek to develop a unique offering of both products and services over the years provided most of the vehicles on show. A key supplier is FOUR who distribute some of the finest brands available including: Audison, Hertz, Rainbow and UPGRADE by ETON.  There were also demonstration vehicles from Kenwood, Pioneer, Focal and Alpine.

Visitors were made up of previous and future customers as well as “friends of the family” and all were made most welcome and fed and watered in a most hospitable manner. This is no more than one would expect from the affable threesome that run the business namely Stuart, Chris and Mark. A good sign of a business well run and a caring attitude to customer service is clear from the amount of customers who use their first names and speak of them as if they are friends.

One such customer is Ricky Mills whose Audi TT is featured elsewhere in this issue and his brother Justin. Ricky holds his brother fully responsible for his car audio upgrade bug and describes him as a “hi-fi nut” both in his car and at home. Speaking with Justin it was clear that he was on the search for an extraordinary audio experience in a car. Having recently invested heavily in a system for his V10 VW Touareg, he clearly felt there were another couple of steps to heaven.

Part of the reason for readily accepting Stuart’s kind invitation was so that I could experience his own VW Beetle. He has had this vehicle for a long time and the audio system in it has been through many incarnations and re-imaginings and always sounds fabulous. Stuart is a seeker of audiophile heaven, so I suspected that if pleased with his own work, Justin would be also. I had given the car an in-depth listen and felt that if it didn’t impress Justin then there was no hope! – Justin and I climbed in and I selected a track by Thomas Dolby, “I Scare Myself” from his “Flat Earth” album and within I would say, 23 seconds, Justin exclaimed “That’s what I want!” but more on this fabulous vehicle later on.

Accutek were also showing another demonstration vehicle. This takes the form of a Skoda Citigo and features Hertz Mille Legend MLK 165.3, 2-way components and a custom enclosure with two, Hertz Mille ML 2000. 3 subwoofers. In the rear, a pair of Hertz Mille Pro MPX 165 coaxial speakers have been mounted in the standard positions. All speakers are driven from a Hertz HDP 5 amplifier, which I know is a “go to” product for Accutek due to its high power yet relatively compact chassis. The entire vehicle has been smothered in Skinz sound deadening and is reported to provide an eerily quiet drive. Unfortunately I did not get time to give it a listen but will report on it once I have.

Back to the Beetle: Stuart and I regularly compare musical notes. I know he reads most of our output but also has his own views on how things should sound. It was Stuart who introduced me to Gregory Porter in a previous incarnation of the vehicle. At that time it featured my favourite Audison Voce speakers, however Stuart has always enjoyed the warmth and natural detail provided by Rainbow speakers. He installed a pair of Rainbow Profi tweeters into a FOUR CAR AUDIO demonstration car a couple of years ago. He was clearly very impressed as the Beetle is now running Rainbow Profi 3-way components and a 10” Rainbow Profi subwoofer.  He wanted to keep the source as pure as possible and so the line level outputs from a Pioneer F88 DAB head unit are fed directly to an Audison bit ONE HD processor. This feeds an Audison Voce AV 5.1K HD and AV Quattro with AV bit IN HD fitted to the front end. Although not currently running a “hi-res” source, the car is fully prepared to do so ready for when some time can be found between paid work.

It would be easy for a casual observer to exclaim that a car with over £6K of equipment fitted should sound good! There is no doubt that the equipment is state-of-the-art however, the install adds just as much as the equipment in this car. Stuart chose to mount the extraordinary tweeters and 3” mids in custom pods that are positioned on the dashboard and present the speakers on axis to front-seated passengers.  Any music lover would have to be very committed to have this done due to the amount of time required. The 6” woofers are built into custom pods in the doors. As these are playing quite less directional low frequencies the fact that they are off axis is not such an issue. Stuart chose to go with the “crystal cone” version of the Profi woofer, PL-W6C. This has a multifaceted cone very similar to the surface of a decorative crystal. In this case, the crystal cone design is far from decorative and instead helps with dispersion and also extra rigidity particularly at high levels. I experienced a near perfect stereo image with no tendency for me to move about to find a sweet spot!

For convenience, I chose to stream from my iPhone. It is the modern way and I find that streamed Qobuz renderings work really well via this medium - I am less keen on Apple Music renderings, which seem a little “stressy” at the top end for my tastes!

I listened to many tracks during my time alone in the car and was totally lost in the near-perfect sound. The image plays wide and deep and when I closed my eyes, I could have been in a large room the sound was so big! It is hard to choose just one tune to report on as everything sounded astonishing, frankly. I was however completely taken away from everything else that was happening around me by “Dreamlight” by Michel Camilo. This comes from his eponymously-titled 1987 album. I had come across Michel Camilo on an album my brother gave me where he duos with Spanish guitarist Tomatito but had never heard his own ensemble work. He grew up in the Dominican Republic and you can hear Latin influences in his jazz piano work and that of the band that accompanies him.

A recurring bass riff starts us off. The stand up acoustic bass playing is so pure with every nuance of the instrument flawlessly reproduced. A crisp cymbal and soft tinkling piano join the fray and an initial verse is played very gently with speedy piano runs and ever-expanding piano chord spikes punctuated by increasingly ardent percussive punctuation surprising the listener. The gentle, spacey production continues with the drum and cymbal hits taking on solid form as the combination of Stuart’s remarkable installation and set up skills and the Rainbow and Audison equipment begin to really show off. You have to wait until around 2 minutes in for the musicians to join in with the showing off as well! – The musicians are clearly enjoying themselves and in particular, Michel himself who can be clearly heard vocalising his piano improvisation. On many systems this sounds like the Oscar Peterson-style groanings of a musician lost in his work. On this system it is clear that Michel is matching the rhythm of his fingers with his vocalising. Not only impressive but adding a live reality so rare in much modern music! The track continues with an ebb and flow of an ocean with white horses appearing from nowhere and crashing on to soft sand. Too poetic? Possibly, but this is an exact a report of how the track made me feel in this car. I was completely transported away!

The biggest impression was one of extreme space. Every sound has its place and stays put throughout the many contours and colours presented by the music. I would say this system is an absolute triumph combining technical achievement with art and I need to go and sit quietly in the dark for a while to collect my thoughts!

I am often amazed at the journey that takes our readers and car owners to a point where they see the value of spending considerable amounts of money on audio equipment. We would not normally review a vehicle like this due to the prohibitive cost of the fabrication involved. However, I have to say that I would rather spend £1500 on a car and have £10-15K worth of audio excellence installed into it than spend £65K on a car and spend an additional £3K to have some fancy-pants branded sound curve put in the head unit! – There is not a car manufacturer’s offering on the planet fit to lick the undersides of the boots of this system! Great work Stuart, great work Accutek.

Stuart’s Top Five Driving Sounds:

Stairway to Heaven - Rodrigo y Gabriela
Watarase - Takeo Moriyama - Live at Lovely

All Night - Camo & Krooked
Right Back Home To You - Chromeo

Free - Deniece Williams